


late to the party (but catching up fast)

by helsinkibaby



Category: The Flying Doctors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Het, Romance, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 21:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11906652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: When Chris turns down the job of a lifetime, Tom finally figures something out.





	late to the party (but catching up fast)

**Author's Note:**

> "Milk Run" post ep. Because I can't be the only one who noticed that, at the end, Tom follows Chris, with a smile, into her office? (Fandom of one, of course I can...) 
> 
> Also for my gen prompt bingo card, "someone gains purpose"

"A girl can change her mind, can't she?" 

Chris said the words with a smile on her face, moving away from Tom, DJ and Geoff towards her office, leaving the three of them staring at one another in considerable surprise. Which Tom totally understood, considered it totally reasonable because it wasn't every day that one turned down a job like Deputy Chief of Intensive Care at Royal Central Hospital. Geoff and DJ were completely flabbergasted, moving back towards DJ's desk in stunned silence, but all Tom could do was smile. 

Well, smile and follow Chris into her office. 

She'd closed the door behind her but he wasn't going to let a little thing like that stop him. Knocking once, he pushed open the door without waiting for her to answer. She would have been well within her rights to give him hell, or at least tell him to get out, but she didn't. Instead, standing side on to her desk, she let the file that had been in her hand fall unopened to the top of the pile as she smiled over at him. "More questions?" Her tone was light, teasing and he didn't think he'd ever get the smile off his face as he closed the door behind him and leaned back against it. 

"Well, since you're obviously not going to need to cry on my shoulder, I thought you might like to... celebrate? Commiserate?" He jammed his hands into his pockets, shrugged his shoulders as he did so. His back, however, remained steadfastly pressed up against the door - if anyone tried to come in, they'd have to go through him. "Or just get plain old drunk?"

Chris laughed and looked down, her head moving from side to side. "I'm not sure I can face the Spanish Inquisition at the pub right now," she told him, and he couldn't blame her for that. Even though only he, Geoff and DJ had been there when McLoughlin left, by the time Chris made it to the pub, the whole town would somehow magically know that she'd got the big city job and turned it down to stay in Cooper's Crossing. It was the way the place worked and he'd long since made peace with it. 

Anyway, he had an answer for that. "Come back to my place," he suggested. "I've got a nice bottle of red we could crack open..." He'd been making his way purposefully slowly through the dozen bottles he'd relieved Vic of, only slightly bitter that David had snatched the other dozen from his grasp. Still, this seemed like as good a reason as any to open another one. If he had champagne, he'd be popping that too. 

Except Chris was looking at him with one eyebrow raised and her smile, though still there, seemed a little more brittle. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea." 

Tom blinked. "Why not? It's a shame to drink alone." 

The sigh Chris heaved had her shoulders pulling up level with her ears. "If we do that, Tom," she said, speaking very slowly, very carefully, "by tomorrow morning, the whole town will have decided that we're back on again, and that you're the reason I decided to stay."

"So we'll make whoever has this week in the book very happy." At least that got a laugh from her, even if it was slightly disbelieving. "Come on, you know they have one. I've been trying to get Vic to let it slip, but he's crafty." Her eyes danced and her lips twitched even as he could tell she was trying to glare at him. 

"I didn't stay because of you." Her honest words surprised him, because to hear them from Debbie's lips were one thing, to hear them from Chris herself was quite another. Ever since his return, they'd managed quite well without discussing their relationship, either past, present or future. Tom supposed it had to come to an end sometime. 

"I never thought you did." Hoped maybe, just a little, that she would, although he'd never seriously let himself indulge in that thought until right this very minute. He didn't admit that though, just let her speak. 

"I was on that plane on the way home today... with Lois and Ben, little Wendy smiling over at me... even thinking about Tyler... and I looked out of the window and I realised... whatever I thought I was looking for, whatever purpose I thought I was missing... it was there all along." She shrugged, began sifting through the files in front of her. "Talking to McLoughlin... I knew I didn't want the job anymore, if I ever really did. I guess once I was faced with the possibility of leaving... I realised what I had." Whatever patient she was looking for, their file didn't appear to be anywhere near the top and she moved the ones she'd already looked through into a smaller pile and kept searching. 

It might have been a dismissal.

It was probably a dismissal. 

Tom wouldn't let himself be dismissed. 

Instead he pushed himself away from the door, came over to stand beside her. He figured he was safe enough - DJ and Geoff must have known that he was in here by now and if they'd heard half the whispers that he had today, they'd be giving the place a wide berth. He rested a hand on her shoulder and she looked up at him, her eyes flaring wide as he looked down at her. "I know what you mean." 

Even to his own ears, his voice was lower in register than it usually was and he didn't miss the effect of it on Chris, her pupils dilating as her lips parted a little. "Tom..." 

Her voice sounded breathless and he placed his other hand on her other shoulder, turning her to face him. She didn't fight him but she didn't help him either, just stared up at him and Tom knew that she was waiting for him to say something, to finish what he started. 

No problem. 

"When I was faced with the possibility of you leaving..." He lifted one hand to cup her cheek, thumb sweeping up and down. Chris's eyelids fluttered, like she was working hard to keep them open and he decided to take that as a good sign. She didn't push him away either and he took that as an even better one. "I realised what I have." He stopped, corrected himself. "Could have." 

Chris's breath came shakily. "You can't say things like that to me, Tom," she told him and just like that, he knew that Debbie's Bush Telegraph had been right on the money, for Chris's part at least. Himself, he was a little late to the party but he was catching up fast. "It's not fair." 

"I know, I know. My timing stinks." But he didn't move away from her, didn't move his hands from her cheek or her shoulder. "But you were right, with what you said earlier." She frowned, probably because she'd said a lot earlier, they both had, just not, Tom realised, what really mattered. "You deserve to have kids. I was watching you, on the plane, with Ben on your lap, cuddling up to you, the way you were with him... and all I could think was that you're going to make an amazing mother." He'd actually been thinking that, but for his decision to leave Cooper's Crossing, it could have been their child she was sitting there holding, and the idea didn't seem nearly as scary as it once had. He slid the hand that was on her shoulder down slowly until it came to rest on her hip. "You deserve that. You deserve everything." 

Chris closed her eyes and he couldn't be sure but he thought she was counting to ten. When she opened them again, they were still dilated, but they were also confused, almost hurt. "What are you saying?" 

Tom sighed; evidently his words were as bad as his timing. "I'm saying that I want you to stay. And not for the sake of the patients, or the job, or the town. I want you to stay because... because I can't imagine a life where I don't get to see you every day. I've had it, I don't want it again. I'm saying I want to be with you. Really be with you." She stared at him for a long, long moment, then her hands moved up to his chest and she leaned into him, a pillar of strength slowly collapsing, her forehead coming to rest over his heart. He fancied she could feel how hard it was beating and when her arms moved around his waist, her hands moving down lower, he knew that she could feel the effect that had on him too. 

Slowly, carefully, in case he was getting this horribly wrong - though if the path her hands were taking was any indication, he wasn't - he pulled back just enough that he could put his hand under her chin, tilt her head up to look at him. What he saw in her eyes, in her smile, had him smiling too, had him leaning down so that his lips could meet hers.

He intended it to be a gentle kiss, a promise of more to come, maybe over that nice bottle of red back at his place. 

That notion lasted all of five seconds or so, because that was about as long as it took for him to realise that he didn't want to stop kissing her at all, to wonder why the hell they ever stopped doing this in the first place. From the way she moved her arms, winding them around his neck as she pressed her body against his, he figured that she just might feel the same so he didn't think twice about deepening the kiss, opening his mouth to hers and sweeping his tongue along the seam of her lips. The resulting sensation of her tongue tangling with his surprised a groan out of him and he felt her lips curl in a smile, one that changed to a gasp as he slid his hands down her back to the cradle of her hips, lifting her off her feet in one smooth motion. Her gasp of surprise changed into one of pure pleasure as her legs bracketed his hips so that she couldn't possibly miss the effect she was having on him. 

"Are we really doing this? Here?" She whispered the words into the kiss and he chuckled, only breaking contact with her so that he could trace a path down her neck, find the exact spot that, back in the day, had always driven her crazy. He knew he'd found it when she actually moaned his name, quite loudly too, and he grinned to himself - three and a half years later, it was nice to know some things hadn't changed. 

"Oh, I think so." He punctuated each word with a kiss along her neck. He may even have nibbled a little but she wasn't exactly complaining. "Desk or wall?"

She actually froze in his arms and for a second, he thought she'd changed her mind. He lifted his head from her neck and looked at her, saw her looking at her desk and, when he followed her gaze he saw that she was more specifically considering the two piles of patient records near the edge. She bit her lip as they looked back at each other and he knew exactly what she was thinking - they both had better things to do than refile all that paperwork. Much better. 

"Wall it is then," he said, without much discernible pause, spinning them both around and walking her towards the back corner of the office, the one where they couldn't be seen from the door. Her back met it with a little more force than he'd anticipated and he winced. "Sorry." 

"Don't be." Her hands were already making short work of the buttons of his shirt and heading rapidly for his belt. "And whatever you do, don't stop." 

Tom didn't have to be told twice. 

*

"Shall we adjourn to the pub then?" Geoff thought it was quite a reasonable suggestion, considering that, despite indepth discussion, he and DJ were no further to making sense of Chris's declining the job offer of a lifetime. "Tom?" He looked around, stepped into the hallway and looked around again. Tom was nowhere to be seen. "Where'd he go?"

DJ shrugged as he came to join him but but then he frowned, his head turning slowly as he stared down the hall towards Chris's office. He looked at the closed door for a long moment, considering. Then he turned back to Geoff and lifted one eyebrow. 

His insinuation was obvious. "You don't think-" Geoff's consideration was cut off abruptly by the faint sound of Chris's voice saying - well, that was an exaggeration, moaning would be nearer the mark - Tom's name, and his head snapped around towards Chris's office. He knew his jaw was hanging open and when he looked back at DJ, the younger man was grinning from ear to ear. 

"You know what they say, Doc," he said brightly. "If the office is a rockin', don't come a knockin'!" Geoff's jaw dropped still further at the phrasing but DJ was positively gleeful, all the more so when there was a definite thump from inside the office, the kind of thump that was made when two bodies hit against the back wall. Hey, Geoff worked in this place, with his wife. He knew exactly what that sound was, and what it meant. "And it's my week in the book too, you little beauty!"

That certainly explained DJ's glee, and there was only one thing for Geoff to say to that as he clapped DJ on the shoulder and they headed rapidly for the door, making sure to turn off the lights on the way out. "Drinks are on you."


End file.
